Day Trips from Modena: Where to Go on Your Second Day

Most answers to the second-day question are a list of pretty towns with distances in kilometres. The distance is not the constraint. Almost everything worth visiting around Modena is shut on Monday, several places open only from Friday to Sunday, and on Sunday the buses and the Sassuolo branch line drop to a skeleton service — exactly when the museums are finally open.

So this guide is built around the two things that decide your day: which day it is, and whether you have a car. Everything below was checked against official sources in August 2026, but hours and fares change: treat the links as the source, not this page.

The two rules that decide everything

Monday closes the doors. Palazzo Ducale in Sassuolo, the balsamic vinegar museum in Spilamberto, both museums in Carpi, the Benedictine museum at Nonantola and the Pilotta in Parma are closed on Mondays. The Rocca di Vignola goes further and opens only Friday to Sunday.

Sunday empties the timetable. This is the trap nobody writes about, because it shows up only in the timetables themselves. On the Modena–Sassuolo line there are about 26 trains each way on a weekday and exactly three on Sundays and public holidays: out of Modena at 8:20, 12:20 and 17:55, back from Sassuolo Terminal at 9:05, 13:05 and 18:45. The bus to Castelvetro drops to one run each way. Put the two together and Tuesday to Saturday is when this region works.

A third rule applies in August alone: the Nonantola museum closes from 13 to 24 August 2026, and Levizzano drops its Saturdays. In August, check before you build a day around anywhere.

Fourteen trips, compared

Times are door to door from central Modena.

Destination	Public transport	By car	Fare	Car needed?	Allow
Bologna	train, 25-45 min, every 15-20 min	40 min	~€5	no	full day
Parma	train, ~32-35 min	45 min	~€6	no	full day
Reggio Emilia	train, 16-19 min, very frequent	30 min	€3-4	no	half day
Carpi	train, 16-21 min, ~30 a day	20 km, 30 min	€3-4	no	half day
Ferrara	train, change at Bologna, 1h20-1h50	1 hour	~€8-9	no	full day
Sassuolo	branch-line train, 41-43 min	18 km, 25 min	€3-4	no	half day
Maranello	SETA bus 800, ~30 min	17 km, 25 min	€3.30	no	half day
Spilamberto	SETA bus 731, ~30 min	16 km, 25 min	bus, zone fare	no	half day
Vignola	SETA bus 731, 45-60 min	22 km, 35 min	bus, zone fare	no	half day
Nonantola	TPER bus 551	11 km, 16 min	bus, zone fare	helpful	2-3 hours
Salse di Nirano	train to Fiorano, then taxi	~20 km, 30 min	—	yes	half day
Castelvetro, Levizzano	SETA 740, one run each way on Sundays	19 km, 30 min	bus, zone fare	in practice yes	half day
Montefiorino	no usable return service	56 km, 1 hour	—	yes	full day
Sestola, Monte Cimone	two buses, 2h20-2h30	65 km, 1h20	—	yes	full day

Rail fares are cheap and change without ceremony: budget about €5 to Bologna, €6 to Parma, €3-4 for the short hops, and take the figure of the day from trenitaliatper.it. Bus tickets go by zone, €1.50 to €8.10 for a single, plus €0.50-0.90 from the driver or a machine (setaweb.it). Check departures there too: SETA reissues its timetables twice a year, the summer one runs 8 June to 14 September 2026, and the Sunday counts below come from it.

The cities on the line

Modena sits on the Via Emilia, and the railway follows it. Four cities are within forty minutes.

Bologna — 25 to 45 minutes, a train every twenty minutes

With a departure every fifteen to twenty minutes you do not plan a return time; you go back when you are finished. The porticoes are a UNESCO site, and the Quadrilatero food streets behind Piazza Maggiore are the densest food shopping in the region.

One warning that saves an afternoon: the Asinelli tower is closed to visitors and Bologna Welcome publishes no reopening date, the works around the leaning Garisenda having kept the climb shut for years. Take the Clock Tower instead.

Parma — about 35 minutes, and one great building

Quieter and more formal than Bologna, built around one complex: the Pilotta, a Farnese palace holding the National Gallery, the archaeological museum and the Teatro Farnese, a wooden theatre of 1618 rebuilt after wartime bombing. One ticket at €18 covers all five museums inside, €2 under 25, €10 for the 17:00-18:00 slot, free under 18, closed Mondays. The Baptistery in pink Verona marble is ticketed with the diocesan museum, around €12; the cathedral is free. Parma is where the prosciutto and Parmigiano come from, so lunch matters.

Reggio Emilia — 17 minutes, and the museums are free

The trip most visitors skip, and the best ratio of effort to reward: trains all day and free admission to every civic museum, including Palazzo dei Musei and the Museo del Tricolore, where the Italian flag was born in 1797. Check the hours first: Mondays closed, 10:00-13:00 Tuesday to Thursday and 10:00-18:00 Friday to Sunday, and from 16 June to 31 August Palazzo dei Musei is mornings only while the Tricolore museum switches to 16:00-19:00.

Ferrara — a change at Bologna, and worth it once

There is no direct train from Modena to Ferrara: you change at Bologna, roughly 1h20 to 1h50 and around €8-9 each way. What you get is a Renaissance city built to a plan, with a moated castle in the middle. The Castello Estense opens 10:00-18:00, closed Tuesdays, with a supplement for the Torre dei Leoni and the last tower ticket sold at 16:30. Go early: with two changes, Ferrara does not forgive a late start.

Verona and Florence — where a day trip stops making sense

Technically yes, in practice no. Verona looks close and is not: no useful direct service, so you change at Bologna, roughly two hours each way. Florence is better but marginal — a handful of direct trains a day, an hour and a quarter, high-speed fares that move with demand. Make it a stop on your route, not a return trip.

Sassuolo: a baroque palace forty minutes down a branch line

This is the one we send people to who want something off the standard circuit. Sassuolo is a ceramics town at the edge of the hills, and above it stands an Este ducal palace rebuilt from 1634 for Francesco I d'Este: painted rooms, stucco, fountains, and the Galleria di Bacco telling forty-one episodes in fresco. €8, €2 between 18 and 25, free under 18, or €10 combined with the Galleria Estense in Modena; Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-18:00, last entry 17:00, free on the first Sunday of the month, fifteen minutes on foot from the station.

Two traps. The palace is closed from 1 January to 26 March, the heaviest seasonal closure here. And on Sundays, with three trains each way, the workable pairings are 8:20 out with 13:05 back, or 12:20 out with 18:45 back; if neither suits, the SETA 670 bus covers the route in about 35 minutes and runs on Sundays. Buying on board the train carries a €5 surcharge.

Carpi: the easiest trip on this page

If you want one trip with no logistics, this is it. About thirty trains a day, sixteen to twenty-one minutes, and Piazza dei Martiri is 700 metres from the station — one of the largest squares in Italy, roughly 276 by 60 metres, with a 52-arch portico down one side and a cathedral begun in 1514.

Inside the Palazzo dei Pio are the Musei di Palazzo dei Pio (€5, €3 reduced) and, on the ground floor, the Museo Monumento al Deportato, opened in 1973: thirteen bare rooms with graffiti drawn from work by Picasso and Guttuso, and outside sixteen concrete steles naming the camps. That is €3, and the Carpicard at €6, €4 reduced, covers both. A few kilometres north the former Fossoli transit camp completes the story.

The catch is the pattern: Friday to Sunday and public holidays, 10:00-18:00, Tuesday to Thursday for booked groups only, closed Mondays, free on the first Sunday of the month. The Fondazione Fossoli brings its mornings forward in summer, so check its page or ring 059 688272 first.

Spilamberto and Vignola: balsamic, a fortress and a staircase

Both sit on the SETA 731, the most useful bus out of Modena: roughly hourly on weekdays, five each way on Sundays and holidays.

Spilamberto, about 30 minutes, has the Museum of Traditional Balsamic Vinegar, in a villa with 129 casks in 22 batteries under the roof. €12 buys the guided visit with a tasting, €10 the tasting alone, €8 for 11-17s, free under 10. Tours run at 10:45, 12:00, 14:00 and 15:30 in Italian or English. Open 10:30-17:30 Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 10:30-13:30 on Wednesdays, closed Mondays: arrive at 15:00 on a Wednesday and the door is shut. Book by phone on 059 781614.

Vignola, 45 to 60 minutes on the same bus, has the Rocca: a real fortress with a late-Gothic frescoed chapel, €10 with audioguide, €6 reduced, free under 12, open only Friday to Sunday, 9:30-13:30 and 15:00-18:30, last entry an hour before closing. Fifty metres away in Palazzo Contrari-Boncompagni is the helicoidal staircase attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola: 106 self-supporting steps, twelve metres of frescoed spiral on a single pillar. It costs €2, runs Saturdays, Sundays and holidays at 11:00, 15:00 and 16:00, tickets at the Rocca box office, and it is the best two euros in the province.

Do not look for a train: the old railway closed in 1972 and is now a 28-kilometre cycle path, and journey planners will offer a two-hour itinerary via Bologna. Take the bus. The cherries are picked from late May to mid-June; outside that window they are not the reason to come.

Maranello, and doing Ferrari and balsamic in one day

The Ferrari Museum at Maranello is 17 kilometres away, on the SETA 800 bus for €3.30 — about half an hour to the Ferrari Nord stop by the door, six Sunday departures from the Autostazione in the summer timetable. Maranello has no station; the nearest is Fiorano.

The detail that saves real money: arrive with a Trenitalia Tper regional ticket and admission drops to €20, against €27 from October to April or €32 from May to September; both museums together are €32 instead of €38 or €42. Show the current-year one-way regional ticket at the entrance.

And the question guests ask most: yes, you can do Ferrari and balsamic in one day, with a car. Maranello and Spilamberto are 14 kilometres apart, twenty minutes — museum in the morning, tasting mid-afternoon. Without a car it does not work: the 800 and the 731 leave Modena in different directions. Our guide to the Ferrari and Lamborghini museums has the detail; Motor Valley from Modena covers the wider circuit.

The trips that want a car

Nonantola, the mud volcanoes and Formigine

Nonantola, 11 kilometres away, has an abbey founded in 752, with a portal carved by Wiligelmo's school and a columned crypt. The basilica is free and open every day, 9:00-18:00 — one of the few things a Monday cannot spoil. The museum next door, with Carolingian parchments, Byzantine silks and illuminated manuscripts, opens 9:30-12:30 Tuesday to Friday and 9:30-12:30 plus 14:30-18:00 at weekends, closed Mondays; its admission price is not published anywhere official, so call 059 549025.

The Salse di Nirano, above Fiorano, are the largest field of salse in Emilia-Romagna: cold mud volcanoes pushing up grey clay and a smell of petroleum. Access is free, every day of the year, no gate and no ticket office, and the main paths are usable with a wheelchair. Two warnings from the reserve's own page: in summer avoid midday, as the core zone has no shade, and after heavy rain the clay makes it unusable.

Formigine, eleven kilometres out, is on the Sassuolo train line about 28 minutes from Modena; its castle holds a multimedia display inside the rocchetta, timed entries in groups of nine, roughly €4 and €3 reduced, open at weekends for most of the year. Published hours and prices have been inconsistent — the official page also advertises free entry for part of the summer — so ring 059 416277 first.

Castelvetro, Levizzano and the wine hills

Castelvetro is a hill village about 19 kilometres out, with a square paved black and white like a chessboard, a sixteenth-century prison tower over 20 metres tall carrying prisoners' graffiti, and a long view over the plain. A few kilometres on at Levizzano Rangone, in the castle, the Museo Rosso Graspa covers wine and rural life: free, Saturdays and Sundays 15:00-19:00, 22 March to 15 November, closed on August Saturdays.

The catch is transport. The SETA 740 runs a handful of times on weekdays and one service each way on Sundays — out of Modena at 17:15, back from Castelvetro at 13:51, which cannot be combined into a day out. In practice this is a car or a taxi. If you can pick your dates, the Sagra dell'Uva e del Lambrusco Grasparossa fills the village with fourteen kiosks pouring sixteen producers: in 2026, 19-20 and 25-27 September, tasting kits at €15, €20 and €25.

The Apennines: two windows in the year, and not the rest

Sestola, Monte Cimone and Lago Santo sit an hour and a half south, and the honest advice is narrow: the Modena Apennines are worth a day in July and August, and in the ski season. Between April and early June, and from October into November, they are not. The Cimone chairlifts shut in the shoulder seasons and the two museums in Sestola's fortress open on Sundays only. In the right window it is a different place — Monte Cimone is 2,165 metres, the highest peak in the northern Apennines, and Lago Santo sits at 1,510 metres, ten minutes from a €4-a-day car park — but there is no bus to any of it, and Sestola alone means two buses and two and a half hours each way.

Montefiorino, an hour of driving away, is worse news. Its fortress holds the museum of the 1944 partisan republic, normally €5 at weekends, but the museum's own page states that under ministerial instructions it remains closed until further notice. Ring 0536 962826 before you set out.

Getting around: licence, ZTL, tickets

Non-EU licences need an International Driving Permit alongside the original: Italian law requires it, rental desks ask for it, and you cannot get one once you are here. A full UK photocard licence is accepted without one, although some companies still ask. The rental chains have offices at Modena station and at Bologna airport.

Then the part that costs foreign drivers real money: Modena's historic centre is a camera-enforced limited traffic zone. No barrier, no warning in English; a camera reads the plate and the fine reaches you months later through the rental company, with an administration charge on top. Our guide to getting to Modena explains it.

Regional trains need no reservation: buy at the station machines, at a tobacconist or in the Trenitalia app, and validate paper tickets before boarding — an unvalidated ticket counts as no ticket. SETA buses sell through the Roger and MooneyGo apps, or tap a contactless card on board. Above all: check the return before you commit to the outbound. Every problem in this article is a return-journey problem.

What we would skip, and who these trips are not for

• Do not travel on a Monday to see anything indoors. Sassuolo, Spilamberto, Carpi, Nonantola, the Pilotta in Parma: all shut.
• Do not attempt Castelvetro or Montefiorino by bus. The timetables do not close the loop, whatever a journey planner says.
• Do not go to Sassuolo between January and 26 March, when the palace, which is the whole point, is closed.
• Do not go to Vignola in winter for the cherries. They are picked from late May to mid-June.
• Do not plan the Apennines in May or October. Lifts closed, museums Sunday-only.
• Do not build a day around climbing the Asinelli tower in Bologna. It is closed, with no reopening date published.
• Do not drive to Montefiorino for the museum. It is closed until further notice by ministerial order.
• None of this is for a single night's stay. With one night, spend it on Modena itself — the old town and one good lunch will fill it.
• It is hard work with small children on public transport. Long gaps between buses and small-town museums with few facilities make for a long afternoon. With a car, most become easy again.

Where to stay

Everything on this page radiates from Modena's station and the bus Autostazione, a short walk from the centre. Stay inside that circle and you walk to the train.

We have four apartments here, booked directly with us, with no platform commission. Two are in the old town — Piazza Mazzini 43 and Via De' Correggi 10, a few steps from Osteria Francescana. The other two are on the ring boulevards, Viale Vittorio Veneto 119 (Modena Prestige) and Viale Vittorio Veneto 67 (Vista Ghirlandina), where the car goes under the building and no permit is needed to reach you. The ZTL permit at €10 a day, which also makes parking inside the zone free rather than paid, is available for all four: essential for the two in the centre, and arranged on request for the two on the boulevards whenever you want to drive into the old town.

We do not sell tours, tickets or transfers, and we do not organise transport. What we do is tell you what is genuinely open on your dates, which, as you have seen, is most of the problem. See our apartments, or where to stay in Modena if you are still choosing an area.

Read before you go

Is Modena worth visiting makes the case honestly; getting to Modena covers airports, trains and the ZTL; visiting a producer explains the balsamic bookings; what to see and the local dishes fill the days between. In September the philosophy festival turns several of these towns into venues.

Frequently asked questions

Can you do day trips from Modena without a car? Yes, but the choice narrows. On weekdays: Bologna (25-45 minutes), Parma (about 35), Reggio Emilia and Carpi (under 20) by train, Sassuolo in 41 minutes on its branch line, and Maranello, Spilamberto and Vignola by SETA bus. On Sundays the timetable thins sharply — stay with Bologna, Parma, Carpi and Maranello, and check the return first.

Which day of the week is worst for day trips from Modena? Monday. Palazzo Ducale in Sassuolo, the balsamic museum in Spilamberto, both museums in Carpi and the Benedictine museum in Nonantola are closed, and the Rocca di Vignola opens only Friday to Sunday. Sunday is the opposite problem: museums open, three or four buses and trains instead of twenty-six.

How much is the train from Modena to Bologna, and do I need to book? A one-way regional ticket costs around €5 and no booking is needed: buy it at the station, at a tobacconist or in the Trenitalia app. Trains leave every fifteen to twenty minutes and take 25 to 45 minutes. Check the fare of the day on trenitaliatper.it, and validate a paper ticket before boarding.

Is Bologna or Parma the better day trip from Modena? They answer different questions. Bologna is closer, far more frequent and bigger in every sense: porticoes, markets, university crowds. Parma is quieter, and the Pilotta complex with its wooden Farnese theatre justifies the extra ten minutes. With one day go to Bologna; with two, add Parma.

Can you visit the Ferrari museum and a balsamic vinegar producer on the same day? By car, easily. Maranello and Spilamberto are 14 kilometres apart, twenty minutes: Maranello in the morning, the balsamic visit mid-afternoon. Without a car it does not work, because the two sit on different bus corridors and you would have to return to Modena to change.

Do I need an International Driving Permit to hire a car in Italy? If your licence was issued outside the EU — United States, Canada, Australia — yes. Italian law requires an International Driving Permit alongside your national licence, and rental desks ask to see it. Arrange it at home: you cannot obtain one here. A full UK photocard licence is accepted without one.

Can you do Florence or Verona as a day trip from Modena? You can, and it is where a day trip stops being pleasant. Florence has only a handful of direct trains a day, around an hour and a quarter; otherwise you change at Bologna. Verona has no useful direct service, roughly two hours each way. Both work better as a stop on your route.

What is open around Modena on a Monday? Not much indoors. The abbey church at Nonantola is free and open every day 9:00-18:00, the Nirano mud volcanoes are free and open all year, and the towns do not close. Monday is for a city where the streets are the attraction.